Saturday, March 22, 2008
J.M.SMITH and me on life
Coding of information
Origin of life
Genetic and memetic people
These are topics I have already written many different articles about. There are thousands of ways how to explain the myriads of coding possibilities. Just consider sound. We have sound coded on CD’s, on tapes, on flash memory cards etc. Your voice can be recorded in a manifold manner and then replayed as many times as you want. Light signals are coded in the same way today; just consider films on tapes, on CD’s or any other medium.
Already few years ago I started to differentiate between “genetic” people and “memetic” people. The difference is this: genetic people pass over to their offspring only the genetically coded information and extremely little memetic information. By memetic people the situation is rather complicated: as we are all born in a genetic way every new-born person must go through its own genetic period of personal evolution. This time can be relatively short or relatively long by memetic people. Genetic people never reach the memetic level. In order to understand this I will use this made-up example: In many societies the tradition goes that a man must plant a tree, make a son, and build a house. All these three tasks for the man in such a society is genetic type. To produce a son is obviously a genetic activity, to plan a tree and build a house is also genetic in that sense that this serves to the family and the son. A friend of mine, a young teacher, came one day to me and complained that he will not be able to fulfill these three tasks, as he will never earn money enough as a teacher in order to be able to construct a new house. So I told him that he is and will be making much more for the mankind when he will be a good teacher and will pass all his super ideas, memes, to the next generation, and not only that, if accidentally, some of his ideas appear to be strong memes, they will spread even among his own generation, or they will be passed from him to his students, and these students will say, reproduce, this meme at home and even parents will get “infected” by his meme.
So, genetic people do not pass too much of non-genetic information and sort of live as animals, as whatever kind of creatures on this earth that reproduce sexually. Memetic people on the other hand, reproduce also genetically, as there is now no other known way and therefore no escape to sexual reproduction, but they pass a huge amount of non-genetic information to their peers as well as to other generations.
And this is the difference between the two: genetic people pass over to the next generation only their genes, whereas memetic people can pass over also non-genetic information.
Origin of life is terribly tricky; basically nobody knows how it happened that some molecules started to function as storage for information that should be passed over to the next generation of that chemical. Later on when we already speak of DNA, then, it appears a bit clearer that DNA is nothing else but a medium for coding, storing, reading and reproducing information. The next stage of this activity seems to be the human language and the possibility it grants: passing over the non-genetic information to peers and to the next generations.
Well, I have felt necessary to write this as I have watched lecture Origin of Life - Lecture by John Maynard Smith because I have had these ideas some time ago already. You may want to compare my simple explanations and those of John Maynard Smith.
You might be interested in knowing more about J.M.Smith and Google is a great help in such research.
Origin of life
Genetic and memetic people
These are topics I have already written many different articles about. There are thousands of ways how to explain the myriads of coding possibilities. Just consider sound. We have sound coded on CD’s, on tapes, on flash memory cards etc. Your voice can be recorded in a manifold manner and then replayed as many times as you want. Light signals are coded in the same way today; just consider films on tapes, on CD’s or any other medium.
Already few years ago I started to differentiate between “genetic” people and “memetic” people. The difference is this: genetic people pass over to their offspring only the genetically coded information and extremely little memetic information. By memetic people the situation is rather complicated: as we are all born in a genetic way every new-born person must go through its own genetic period of personal evolution. This time can be relatively short or relatively long by memetic people. Genetic people never reach the memetic level. In order to understand this I will use this made-up example: In many societies the tradition goes that a man must plant a tree, make a son, and build a house. All these three tasks for the man in such a society is genetic type. To produce a son is obviously a genetic activity, to plan a tree and build a house is also genetic in that sense that this serves to the family and the son. A friend of mine, a young teacher, came one day to me and complained that he will not be able to fulfill these three tasks, as he will never earn money enough as a teacher in order to be able to construct a new house. So I told him that he is and will be making much more for the mankind when he will be a good teacher and will pass all his super ideas, memes, to the next generation, and not only that, if accidentally, some of his ideas appear to be strong memes, they will spread even among his own generation, or they will be passed from him to his students, and these students will say, reproduce, this meme at home and even parents will get “infected” by his meme.
So, genetic people do not pass too much of non-genetic information and sort of live as animals, as whatever kind of creatures on this earth that reproduce sexually. Memetic people on the other hand, reproduce also genetically, as there is now no other known way and therefore no escape to sexual reproduction, but they pass a huge amount of non-genetic information to their peers as well as to other generations.
And this is the difference between the two: genetic people pass over to the next generation only their genes, whereas memetic people can pass over also non-genetic information.
Origin of life is terribly tricky; basically nobody knows how it happened that some molecules started to function as storage for information that should be passed over to the next generation of that chemical. Later on when we already speak of DNA, then, it appears a bit clearer that DNA is nothing else but a medium for coding, storing, reading and reproducing information. The next stage of this activity seems to be the human language and the possibility it grants: passing over the non-genetic information to peers and to the next generations.
Well, I have felt necessary to write this as I have watched lecture Origin of Life - Lecture by John Maynard Smith because I have had these ideas some time ago already. You may want to compare my simple explanations and those of John Maynard Smith.
You might be interested in knowing more about J.M.Smith and Google is a great help in such research.
# posted by Dalibor @ 6:04 AM 
